Update Announcements by Craig Stark 25 May 2026

By Craig Stark

Recently I saw a post on a Facebook group that for me put a double underline under one of the more common puzzlers for sellers new to bookselling, and that is, How do I price my books? The answer in this post was lengthy and, and like so many other obvious spam-ish efforts, divided into many paragraphs and told a familiar story of a newbie struggling to make a few bucks and running into a common issue. It began (paraphrasing): "If I list an item that sells almost immediately, I conclude that (and this was what other sellers were reinforcing), I priced it too low. If I list another item and it sits and sits without selling, I conclude that I priced it too high."

Then, the story goes, this poor soul began to research items before she priced them, relying on what other sellers were asking for the same thing. We call this piggybacking. Most of us know, of course, this is an approach fraught with danger, if for no other reason than these "comps" were based on items that hadn't sold. Someone eventually pointed out to her that she should examine items that have sold because this is what "professionals" do. It's much more reliable, and this indeed appeals to one's intuition, right?

The problem for Ms. Spammer was that access to historical database pricing was either hidden under a layer of unsold items and/or, if it existed at all, came at a cost. A paywall. Setting the obvious spam aside, this is perhaps a too common answer to pricing items, perhaps helpful to some extent, but in the most important sense, it doesn't always see (to reverse a common maxim) the specific trees for the forest. Guess what this spammer was doing - what else? - attempting to sell an app that removed these barriers.

At one time, in a now 28-year career, I spent over $1,000 a month on historical pricing databases (what she called "professional") with the intention of getting a sense on how to price things more usefully than I had been. Surely some of you recall the pre-Keepa years when Amazon demanded over $300 a month for this insider information. American Book Prices Current also demanded a three-figure entry fee, and after acquisition by Biblio, now runs a hefty $225 annually.) Today, Keepa has attached to Amazon, and it's much cheaper, charging $20 or so a month, depending on the US/UK currency exchange rate. But Keepa tracks only Amazon pricing, so its use is severely restricted because of both its focus on modern and mostly hypermodern books and a catalog with severely limited search issues. Personally, I would rate another service - The Rare Book Hub - as a more useful source of data for advanced booksellers and/or those peddling older books, but the last time I checked, one had to cough up over $600 a year for access.

What I discovered fairly early on, especially with historical databases, was that something that was much more affordable and reached back 10 or 15 years into primarily eBay sales - namely, Worthopedia - delivered search results that were more currently applicable and therefore more relevant. More importantly, the original descriptions of what was sold were retained and low outcomes were filtered out. At first glance this might not seem to be a great deal even at their price, given that eBay's free Terapeak search does the same thing. Not exactly. Terapeak reaches back only 3 years, and most of the descriptions and photos originally attached to sold items have been stripped off. Worthopedia retains the descriptions, both text and photos.

This is an important distinction because, without descriptions and photos, we have few tools left to explain the inexplicable spread of outcomes for seemingly identical items. And these spreads can be huge. But, more often than not, armed with this additional data, we can often explain why.

Here are just a few factors:

The passage of time comes to mind first. If prices show a downward trend over time, it persuades us that what's happening is what happens to almost all books: Values decline over time, some more dramatically than others. But what if values start relatively low, stay low for years, then jump? This can happen if the book involves an especially important person who dies. Or a movie is released retelling the story in the book or a remake of a much older movie is released. Or an industrious bookseller has discovered something about a book that was coincidentally lost for decades or didn't assume in importance until much later. (This brings to mind a recent series of BookThink articles starting with That Printer of Udell's.)

These are easy explanations.

Another possibility is pricing, as mentioned above - a book priced too low and snapped up quickly. Or perhaps it was priced high and listed at a propitious moment, a gap in time when no other copies were available and an enthusiastic collector happened to be lurking close by. Condition can also vary widely, and photos help to see this, also the presence or not of a dust jacket. And don't forget about first edition issue points, included or not, which often results in a spread of hundreds of dollars or more.

A less common reason might be the seller's reputation, good or bad, and by "good" I mean there is evidence of a seller who consistently provides complete, accurate descriptions, exceptional photos and bang-bang customer service or has compiled fat Rolex of past buyers, etc., though doubtless the present phase of the moon would enter the picture at times. Even less common is the seller who has learned how to build value into books. If you've followed BookThink for any length of time, surely you've seen this topic discussed, though here is not the place for it.

The point is, there are lots of determinant factors for those who take the trouble to observe, but the one factor that will always be true is that pricing can never be based on the mythical intrinsic value of something no matter how a seller did or didn't botch a listing, or where or when it was listed. No book has intrinsic value. All it has is potential value - and this turns precisely on a discrete dime - a negotiable agreement between buyer and seller on a price at a moment in time.

Still, the question keeps coming up: "What's this book worth?"

First, though more useful as a guiding light, historical pricing ages quickly when new, much more quickly as time goes by. This is why it's only marginally applicable if it reaches back decades into history, and even then its value is more as a tool of comparison to other, similar books that have sold in a more or less comparable time period. It can also suggest an indication of rarity. It can also, let's face it, give one a feel for its potential value.

This business of pricing, nevertheless, is more efficient if one sets historical pricing aside and starts with a search of unsold copies. If you come across dozens of low-priced comps, you instantly know its fate, and you avoid the cost of building any additional labor into it.

Price guides travel a similar path. Though many thousands of them have been issued to answer this same question. Hah. If you've ever used one, I'd guess that you've already observed that even the best ones don't align with the current marketplace in any consistent sense and, moreover, come with a short shelf life. Again, they might give you an idea of how a book's price compares to others in a similar genre or whatever, but unless they also include detailed bibliographic or related durable content, just wait five or ten years, and you can hardly give them away.

So, I've arrived at the topic of AI in this month's newsletter. First, a few questions for you. Is AI helping your bookselling business? Is it hurting your business? Have you tried using it for pricing guidelines? Are you waiting to use it until they get things right? Or at least more right? Or, stubbornly, are you resisting using it at all and will continue to resist it until … whatever happens?

These are valid questions, I think, and not surprisingly, like so many other questions about bookselling that pop up, the answers depend. Today's feature article takes this AI thing on once again and attempts to float out possible answers, including their potential as pricing guides. Some of these answers will come from observations about what other booksellers are presently doing, some from my own experiences and some, shamelessly, from guesses, wild or educated, on what might transpire in the future. If anything is certain, it's that various demands to adaptation to change will be knocking at our doors if we are to survive in the long run.

A reminder: As of about a week ago, BookThink is on Facebook. For the time being there aren't any hoops to jump through. It's a public place and simple to register. I hope to see you there soon! You can register here.